


The Wall

by posingasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Awkward Sam, Big Brother Dean, Detective Dean, Detective Sam, Hacker Sam, Human Trafficking, M/M, Police Officer Dean, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3978832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/posingasme/pseuds/posingasme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detectives Sam and Dean have been tracking a serial killer. So are FBI agents Castiel and Victor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Wall

By the time Dean made it to the apartment, Sam was ready. He had pizza and hot wings, cold beers, and, heaven help him, he had even bought licorice. There was Axl Rose whining and he had Robert Plant in the wings just in case.

Calming Dean down enough to work after spending all day in court took quite a bit of preparation. One wrong move could blow the whole night.

"I don't spend so much energy getting ready for a date," he grumbled.

Not that there had been any of those recently.

He sighed and popped open a bottle, just as the door banged open.

"Mercer postponed again!" The tornado that was his older brother tore through the apartment mercilessly. A polished black shoe flew past Sam's head to land against the older man's bedroom door. He ducked to avoid the second one. "And that monster is out on bail because your buddy Tyson screwed up some paperwork!"

Sam cringed. It had been a very long time since Sam had broken up with Tyson Brady. But Dean liked to remind him just how much he loathed this particular prosecutor at every opportunity. Dean loathed everyone Sam had ever slept with. But this one, he had to work with.

"What the hell is all this? Did you scratch my baby or are you going to try to make me work on a court day?"

"Well, it certainly isn't the first. Last time I took your car, you punched me."

Dean nodded, dismantling his belt and laying his things across the dining table. "That's right. Glad you remembered. You steal my baby, you get punched."

"Dean! I was making a supply run! I wasn't stealing it!"

"Well, that's what it looked like to me when I got home and she wasn't where I left her. So? You're trying to make me work on a court day, huh? What's so important it can't wait till tomorrow?"

Sam could hear the interest in his brother's voice. Dean tried to pretend his heart wasn't in it anymore. He tried to give himself over to hunting the usual monsters, the ones he had a chance of seeing brought to justice. But Sam knew his brother, and he knew there was one cold case that still burned like hell under his skin.

Dean placed his firearm on the table and his eyes locked with Sam's. "What did you find on Azazel?"

***

John was staring at the wallpaper in the old house. It was made of hundreds of scraps of paper, news articles, printouts of police reports, photographs from the morgue and crime scenes, sticky notes filled with numbers, torn envelops, even cocktail napkins with blurred ink, and a map of every city, town and wild area in the state of Kansas, all held together with a thousand pushpins. It was the most gruesome and nightmarish wallpaper Dean could imagine, but it had always been there, growing inches each year, until one day he feared it would cover the whole house and the three of them living in it. Their whole existence would be nothing but the stale stench of alcohol and images of blood and smoke and dead eyes.

Except Sammy's room. He would not allow this to become the thing that rocked Sammy to sleep at night. The low, nearly imperceptible rumble of grief and anger, depression and obsession, which reverberated through the walls, that was only for John and Dean. He wanted to see this horror through to the end, wanted to exact justice, and he would follow his father to hell and back if that was what it took. But Sammy came first. John and Dean would put this demon in the ground, or at least in maximum security, but he would not let this become Sammy's life too. Dean was a grunt, and it was too late for him anyway. Sammy, though. Sammy was better than them all, and if he did nothing else right in his life, he would give Sam a chance at something better.

"Dean, stop lurking."

He flinched, then stood straighter. "Yes, sir."

"What do you want?"

He licked his lips and took a breath. "Just...I'm cooking something for Sammy. Will you eat something?"

"No. I'm not hungry."

So it was one of those nights. Dean swallowed. "I haven't started yet," he lied. "I can make anything you want. You gotta eat, Dad."

"I said no, Dean," his father repeated quietly. It was not anger in his voice so much as focus. His attention was on the work, where it should be. Dean got distracted. John never did.

Dean nodded. "Yes, sir. Yell if you need anything."

"I won't need anything."

His stomach hurt as he backed out of the room. It was not quite nausea, and not exactly anxiety. It was something akin to embarrassment, but Dean didn't have a word for that. Years later, he would know it as shame and loneliness. But at eleven years old, he just wished it would go away.

"Dad's working," he explained to Sam at the kitchen table. "I made you mac and cheese with hamburger."

Sammy's sigh irritated him.

"What? Something wrong with what I made?"

"Nothing. Just thought Dad was eating with us. He's home. But he's not eating."

The older boy took a deep breath. "Oh." He put a bowl in front of his brother and watched him stab at it with his fork. He suddenly wasn't hungry himself. If John wasn't hungry, he didn't need to eat either. He could handle whatever John could handle, be whatever John could be.

"How come he's not?"

He looked down at the stupidly big eyes gazing up at him. "Sammy, Dad's a really important guy. Really important. And that means he's busy. He catches bad guys, Sammy. He's too busy to just sit with us for some macaroni when there's bad guys."

Sammy nodded. "I guess so. You're gonna sit with me, though, aren't you?"

"'Course. You got homework?"

"Little," he said around his mouthful.

Dean smiled at him. He was so proud of his brother. The kid was in the second grade a year early. That's how smart the little nerd was. "Need help?"

"No. It's math."

The older boy wasn't sure if Sam was saying he didn't need help because it was math or if Dean wouldn't be helpful because it was math. But it didn't really matter, since both were probably true statements. "Okay. Let me know. I did pass second grade, you know."

"What's that mean?"

Green eyes rolled. Of course it wouldn't occur to Sam that some kids didn't get moved up every year, or twice a year like he did. "Never mind. Eat."

"I want milk."

"Oh. Yeah, okay. After dinner, you want to throw a football?" he asked as he got up to pour a glass.

"Can you not tackle me?"

He snorted a laugh. "Yeah. Deal. Just catch, I promise."

Sam perked up. Whenever Dean gave in to one thing, Sam always followed up with another push. "And can I tell you about the Chiefs and the Cowboys?"

He wanted to groan. For such a little kid, Sam was an enormous geek. He managed to turn something active like football into a math class about statistics. Dean could barely do fractions. He wanted to groan, but he didn't. He looked at his brother's hopeful gaze and sighed. "Dude, I don't care. Talk all you want. Don't mean I'm listening."

Sam rewarded him with a grin full of macaroni.

***

If Dean hadn't disarmed before Sam told him the situation, he might have been worried. The man was livid.

"How did we miss this?" he screamed. "How did we miss it?"

Sam wished his brother would not be quite so loud, but he knew better than to remind him of the neighbors downstairs. And anyway, he was pretty pissed off himself.

A fist pounded onto the table mercilessly. "This is bullshit! This is...this is unacceptable! How did we miss this?"

He sighed. "Look. We know now. It was him. It has to be him."

"Of course it's him!" Dean bellowed. "You dug it up yourself, and you don't screw up! Goddammit, Sammy! This is unbelievable."

There was praise in that statement somewhere. Sam would run it through his head later to figure out what it had been. "We had eyes everywhere, Dean. I was bound to trip a wire at some point. I was careful. But I wasn't careful enough. I'm sorry."

Dean whirled on him. "Sorry! You think this is because of you? It's because that freaking demon is always four steps ahead of us. If Dad were here-"

Sam had let him rant, but now he wanted to cut their losses and adjust their playbook. "Dad isn't here. If Dad were here, Azazel still wouldn't know about us at all. Dad got too close just like I did, but not digitally; no, he went and got himself killed because he wouldn't tell us the damn plan. He wouldn't let us in when he needed us. So now he's dead. And I'm going to catch the guy that killed him. You done bitching so you can help?"

Dean glowered, but stayed quiet.

"Now grab pizza and a beer, and get over here. Azazel is sitting in a vacant apartment somewhere thinking about you and me having screwed the pooch. We gotta come back from this."

"Fine. Right. So tell me again. Your algorithms or whatever caught up with him in Topeka."

***

"All I'm saying is that you'd have a chance at finding him if you could track his money better!" Sammy shouted.

John's eyes flashed dangerously. "I've been doing this since before you were born. It's what my father did. It's what Samuel Campbell did. It's what your mother did. You going to sit there and tell me you know better than your entire family how to do this job?"

Sammy's face tightened stubbornly. "I'm telling you there are tools now, resources Detective Winchester didn't have and Captain Campbell wouldn't have known what to do with! Mom didn't have the internet, Dad, but we do!"

Dean's stomach was miserable. Maybe Sammy was right. He didn't know, but Sammy usually was. He just wished he and John would stop glaring at one another like wolves about to clash.

He took a breath and gathered his strength. "Sammy, what would you need to get started?" he asked quietly.

John turned his stare on him now, and he quaked under it. But he held his jaw clenched in determination.

Sammy stared too. Then his frustration faded into concentration. "I guess...if I had a clean computer with a good processing speed, and access to all his known aliases, and if I had the accounts and transactions we're sure about, and I mean really, really sure..."

Dean could feel John bristling at that last part, but he thought he understood. Better to have less to go on than hunches which might create a false pattern. He nodded for his brother to continue.

"Basically, get me every number we're a hundred percent on. Every number. His middle school locker combination if you got it. Get me every number you know. I'll do the rest."

John's eyes narrowed sharply. "This legal? What you're talking about?"

Sammy took a deep breath. "Some of it. But...no, sir. Not what I'm going to be doing."

At last, the man smiled. "Good. I'm tired of the red tape." With that, he went to the safe which held the most sensitive information and turned the dial. Eleven, two, twenty-eight. Because the dial did not go up to eighty-two.

Dean's chest tightened every time he thought of those numbers. They represented the day he had lost his mother...and his father.

***

Blue eyes squinted at the screen. "Now that's very interesting, isn't it?"

Victor looked up from his paperwork. "What? Tell me you aren't being sarcastic. I need something interesting."

His partner did not respond, but his lips curled into the ghost of a smile. "Now that. That is very interesting." He sat back to consider the implications. "Vic, what are you thinking for dinner?"

"Chinese, probably."

"Hm. I thought with a break like this, your first choice would be surf and turf."

He whirled in his seat. "What? What? What do you have?"

Castiel Engel pointed at his screen. "A sign God may still be on our side." He smiled softly. "Look. I thought this was a fluke, the activity in Topeka. But I kept being drawn back to it."

"By what?"

"When I ran his last known location, I found a post office box in the name of one of his aliases."

***

"A P. O. box? What for?"

"For a drop off, I think." Sam gazed at his screen, shaking his head. "And when I tripped his wires, when he realized I had eyes on it, borrowing the security camera, he burned it, of course."

Dean cringed. "Literally, I guess."

"It's what he does. But, Dean, the point is, I got him. He was there. In Topeka."

"With a post office box in the name of an alias we've known for fifteen years!" Dean shouted suddenly.

***

"But he hasn't used that alias for something like thirteen years. Right? Why now?"

Castiel shrugged. "Who cares? We're only one step behind him instead of twelve. I'm calling that a win."

Victor shook his head. "Ain't a win till we lock that monster up. Why were you looking in Topeka anyway? We haven't known him to operate there before."

***

"No, but I was looking at his patterns, over the past twenty years." Sam sighed to himself sadly. "Isn't it horrible I got two decades of data to work with?"

"And countless victims. Talk faster."

"He's been operating in Topeka, I know it. He's either getting lazy or I just know him that well by now."

Dean huffed and threw back his beer. "Scary thought. Go on."

"Yeah. So his habit is to set up in a vacant apartment. He finds one where the occupant has paid through the month or quarter but has to leave and wants out of the lease."

"Right. He goes and pays them cash to buy them out. They pay the landlady, and she assumes the other guy hasn't left yet. So it's never in his name."

"Right. He fishes for vics for a few weeks, then sends his goons after them. After a quick con, he and his new vics are out of town, and no one knows they were there, till the place starts to reek."

The older man's eyes narrowed. "Because that's where he leaves the bodies from the last town."

"Yeah."

"So who went missing in Topeka?"

"That's just it. Nobody yet."

Dean's nearly dropped his bottle. "Wait, what?"

Sam nodded. "I know you're pissed off I didn't find the post office box till yesterday, and I red flagged him with the cameras. But I think I finally got him within reach, Dean. He's there. He's in Topeka. Right now."

***

"What makes you think he didn't bolt? He's burned that P. O. down. Why wouldn't he jet if he thought somebody were watching him?"

Castiel looked at Victor quietly for a moment, considering. It was really just instinct. He wanted it to be more concrete than that. But he felt it. "Because I think he's luring someone in first."

Victor's frown was severe. "You mean other than his usual toys?"

"Yeah. I can't explain it really. But there are traces, ghosts in the patterns, like someone else is working them too. Whoever it is, he's good. He's really, really good. I can't give you more than that. I just feel he's done running and he's turning to fight. And it isn't us he's worried about."

Victor snorted. "Whatever it is, he better be a lot more afraid of me. Come on. We can be in Topeka in about five hours. Meet me back here in two, we'll split the drive and be there by dawn. I'll have locals standing by when we get there."

A nod was his only response.

***

"He's right on top of us. Thirty miles from Lawrence; can that be a coincidence?"

Dean was biting his lip and pacing. "Alias he used all those years ago." He snapped his fingers several times, as if trying to jolt his memory. "Last time he went by that, where was he? Why is that one special?"

"Damon de Occhigialli. The demon of the yellow eyes."

"He's had a hundred stupid, pretentious names. Why's that one stand out in my head?"

Sam sat back to watch his brother work. He had done his part. He analyzed data, found patterns, tracked money, but he was never able to get ahead of Azazel. He could see what the monster had done, and explain how he did it. He had found ways to cut off funds Azazel was having wired, to intercept communications and deals, but those were annoyances to a thing like Azazel. Minor irritations. If they knew anything at all about this demon, it was that he loved his job. Money was simply a bonus for him.

Dean was the psychological profiler, the one who spent entirely too much time in the heads of monsters, and who had lived his whole life in the head of this one in particular. He had every bit of data on a running screen behind his eyelids. Just as their father had stared for hours at a time at a horrific wall, Sam could sometimes see Dean's eyes flicking as though he were connecting pieces in a puzzle no one else could see, and he knew he was staring at that same wall again. The wall had grown to include everything since John had gotten himself killed, had closed Dean in without mercy. Sam could not see the wall himself, but he could see Dean, and it hurt just as badly.

The green eyes flashed fiercely all of the sudden, and he looked hard at his brother. "Damon. That's who he was when he came for you, Sammy," Dean growled, his words dripping with venomous hate. "Damon is the one that tried to take you. And he's trying again. He knows you're the one behind the cameras. He's not waiting us out. He's luring us in."

***

Castiel had heard Victor leave to pack his bag. His gaze remained fixed on the screen. "Who are you? You know what he's done to people. You know what he's going to do to you. Why the hell do you want to take on the most brutal, most intelligent and most destructive serial killer on the planet? Who are you?"


	2. Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting inside the head of a monster is dangerous work. 
> 
> Getting inside the head of Sam Winchester is at least as difficult.

Sam had a degree in Statistical and Computer Applications in Criminal Justice, and one in cryptography. He had taught himself how to build a computer from parts when he was nine and bored one summer. He could read most coding as easily as he could read English. Better, sometimes, because computer languages were never metaphorical or sarcastic, and they didn't lie or have hidden agendas. Math and patterns were his pleasure and his curse.

People were not like numbers. If they were, Sam could take the values of the activity in their brain chemistry, learn their habits, and plot out with confidence exactly what they could be predicted to do in the near future. He could even tell which were likely to be victims and which were likely to inflict violence.

But people were not like numbers. That was why profilers like Dean were necessary, and why Sam was grateful for them. For one thing, Sam didn't like having to get inside the heads of people like Azazel. He knew the monster's habits backward and forward, could recite chronologically the license plate of every car he had ever stolen and ditched, knew the blue book value of every human he had ever sold. But he would never know why he did the things he did.

That was why he collected everything he could find, and let Dean analyze it from there. Dean could sink into the dark, disturbed recesses of the man's sick mind. It was Sam's job to keep him from traveling in that place too long.

***

When Dean was seventeen, and John was out riding a hunch in Nebraska, Sammy had made a break for it. Dean had come home from school livid, intending to demand an explanation for Sammy leaving school after first period without a word to anyone. Sammy had been gone six hours by then.

When Dean had looked in the bedroom, he had taken a breath to calm himself and let his eyes float over the scene, let his mind dip into Sammy’s.

_Sammy-but he called himself Sam, because he thought Sammy sounded like a kid’s name. He was almost fourteen, didn’t want to be treated like a child. Sam had never been a usual kid, always smart, strangely smart, but awkward, confident bordering on arrogant in some ways, and completely insecure in others. Sam had never skipped a class. Never. This was new, bad, exciting. Scary, maybe. Was Sam scared right now? What would he do while rushing into the bedroom while scared? Sam always had a plan. That was a given. If Sam had intended to skip school, he had given weeks to planning it._

Dean could feel his anxiety level increasing as he slipped further into Sammy’s state of mind. He hunched a bit without noticing, to reduce himself to a height closer to Sammy’s.

_Thirteen, almost fourteen. Not a kid. But scared._

His gaze lingered on the way the closet door was slightly ajar. His brother never left a drawer or door open unless he was being especially careless, and he was especially careless when he was especially nervous. Sammy got nervous when he was doing something he knew better than to do.

The older boy walked toward the closet and pushed aside the mass of shirts hanging on the rack. The wall behind was missing chunks of paint, and had pin holes all over it. With a sigh, Dean reached under the shelf inside the closet where Sammy kept his shoes. The base was not smooth either, as if something had been taped inside and then ripped out.

_So he had money. And he had a plan. And most of all, because it was Sammy, he had his training._

Dean was not entirely unskilled with a computer himself. After all, it was 1996, and he was not his father. He opened the one John almost never used, and helped himself to the police search database. He found two cars reported stolen today, each about three hours ago. One was a blue 1968 Camero, and although Dean might have enjoyed that himself, he knew his brother. The other was a gray 1989 Honda Civic. That was the one. Nondescript commonly stolen car, which would blend in at any motel or gas station parking lot. He would have replaced the tags by now, switched out with some poor bastard who legitimately owned a gray Honda Civic, who was about to be pulled over for having stolen his own car. Finding Sammy through the car was not an option.

Green eyes closed.

_What does Sam need? Not Sammy, not the kid who likes football statistics and whose enormous feet would not stop growing, who read everything from José Saramago to Tolkien, but didn’t know the first thing about how to talk to a girl. Not Sammy, the kid who could live on Thai food, Mr. Pibb and video games. What does Sam think he needs?_

_Freedom. Sam wanted freedom and normality. He wanted to be a kid who didn’t know how to steal a car and who wouldn’t realize he needed to switch out the plates. He wanted quiet. He wanted to pretend he didn’t know what was out there in the dark._

_He wanted a dog._

Dean opened his eyes and sighed. It wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take some time. But he would find his brother. The tricky part was finding him before John returned.

***

Castiel was quiet on the drive, and Victor continued giving him sidelong glances. Finally, his partner sighed. “Put the computer away, man. What are you going to be able to do now?”

 Blue eyes turned to him slowly. He was not interested in explaining to Victor exactly what he could accomplish on the drive, particularly because he really wasn’t accomplishing anything at all. He was staring. So he closed his laptop and slid it under his seat. He turned his stare out the window at the darkness.

“What, you’re taking a nap?”

“Perhaps I will.”

“Great. Fine. I’ll turn on the news if you’re going to do that. Gotta have something to keep me awake other than adrenaline I can’t actually use for hours.”

“It won’t bother me. You know that. Turn on whatever you like.”

Victor gave a soft snort and did just that.

Castiel watched out the window. He hated riding in a car. Driving was not so bad, but being a passenger was so…confining. But he was free to think of his ghost now.

It had occurred to him about twenty minutes before that if they finished the job this weekend, if they finally brought an end to Azazel’s running, he might never find out who the ghost was. He supposed that should not bother him. After all, his job was to bring to justice a man who killed nearly everyone who had any contact with him. He had no reason to think that the ghost was somehow working with Azazel. So he had no real reason to be obsessing about him.

 _Him. Could be a woman._ But Castiel had considered the ghost male for months. He was not sure why. It was also entirely possible that the ghost was actually multiple people. But he just didn’t think so.

Every time he went to a cafe to get some time to himself lately, he found himself staring at every man with a laptop, wondering. His background in profiling had him running a constant list in his head, as much as he tried not to. _A young man, mid- to late-twenties, perhaps, somewhere in America, and probably in the mid-west, judging by the time zones and the firewalls he had broken through. Intelligence off any scale. Clearly obsessed with Azazel’s crimes, enough to have hacked into the FBI files on multiple occasions._ Castiel thought the ghost was Azazel at first, but he had come to dismiss that theory. _A spurned business associate, perhaps. But it was too dedicated. Too compulsive._

_A victim._

_He or someone he knew had been hurt by Azazel at some point._

Castiel had attempted to trace this ghost back to its source many times. Tracking Azazel was his job. Finding this ghost was…it had become something of an obsession for him, in parallel with this guy’s vendetta against Azazel, if that was what it was. He stayed up at night, following the whispers and the flipped switches, chasing murmurs in the codes, where his ghost had laid traps and set alarms to be triggered. Castiel was good, very good, and yet this ghost always managed to ditch him in the labyrinth of cyberspace. Then there was the time he felt certain he had him. It was four in the morning, Central time, and he was certain he had him this time.

It had all led him to a dead end. The ghost had known he was following him. It had led to an emptiness in the cloud, all dark, except for a single, short message, encoded. When Castiel decoded it, it became the only direct communication his ghost had ever given him, and it made his heart pound.

**_Not going to hurt you. Here to end Azazel. Do not get in my way._ **

His ghost, the one he was desperate to find before Azazel did, and now was desperate to find before he and Victor found Azazel…he consumed Castiel’s thoughts at all times. The one brief link they had shared was terrifying and incredible. It told him everything, and nothing, all at once. His ghost was a good person. Not looking to hurt innocents. But jealously pursuing Azazel to the exclusion of all else.

Tracking Azazel had been everything for Castiel and Victor. It was their job, and beyond that, it was just what had to be done. There was a monster out there, and he had to be stopped. Castiel would do whatever he had to do in order to finally end this monster’s reign. But he wondered what exactly he was going to find when he did so.


	3. Partners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both sets of partners close in on Topeka's most dangerous.

Sam sat in silence on the drive to Topeka. There was little he could do before they got there. He could practically smell Dean's adrenaline, and it scared him a little.

This was certainly not the first time Azazel had made this personal. Their mother had become the first victim, when Mary had tracked a missing teenager to a shuttered meat packing plant, where she had uncovered fifteen holding cells with twelve kids inside, waiting to be auctioned to the highest bidder. When Mary had brought her father, Captain Campbell, from the adjacent county into the rescue, they had both become targets for Azazel. Mary was the arresting officer for the Benders, who had been charged by Azazel with watching over the teens until they were purchased. Samuel Campbell had been the public face, who had conducted the press conference and stated that his department did not believe the Benders were capable of operating alone.

Within ten days, both Samuel and his wife had burned alive in their homes, and Mary had died trying to save her younger son from a house fire in the same night. John had been on duty at the department when the tragedy struck, and had arrived on scene just in time to see Dean rush out of the burning home with baby Sammy in his arms.

Henry Winchester, the quiet detective who worked at a precinct four counties south, had dedicated himself to proving that Mary's death was murder by an accomplished arsonist he had been trying to locate for years. John had insisted it was the human traffickers Mary and Samuel had enraged. When, two years later, Henry was left on his department's steps as a pile of ash and bones, there had been a message attached to his jacket, warning John Winchester to back off or he would lose his sons too.

While drunk once, Dean had explained that was the last time he ever saw their father. When Henry was killed, the man they lived with became John. "He tried till then, Sammy. I think if Henry hadn't been there, he'd have fallen apart as soon as Mom died. But once Henry was gone...I never saw our real dad again. There was only John. He wasn't even a detective anymore. He was a hunter."

Sam never heard such things while Dean was sober. Dean had such devoted respect for their father that nothing short of an order from John himself could force anything but praise from Dean's mouth. But after drinking, sometimes Sam got the other stories, the ones that hurt Dean to his core, and haunted his sleep.

He glanced at his brother now, all flashing green eyes and clenched jaw. He was ready to strike down the thing which had killed his father, and then, seventeen years later, killed the hunter, John, who had replaced him.

***

Dean was not worried John would find Sammy first. It was that he would come home and Sammy would still be missing that terrified him. So, as his father's return became imminent, Dean became more frenzied.

He had found the car Sammy had ditched. The police had located it outside a public library in Kansas City. It was an easy thing to figure out where Sammy had gone from there. Dean had searched just three vacant lots before finding the one with the dog, the boxes of Thai and the Mr. Pibb cans. It was like he could smell Sammy's trail, like a bloodhound. He waited patiently until Sammy returned with his bags of pork rinds and candy and then greeted him by punching him so hard he fell to the ground. Sammy had tried to fight back, tried to use his training, but Dean knew every move, had taught him every move. It was over before it had begun. The dog was confused.

By the time he had dragged Sammy back to the house, Dean was exhausted. There had been tears, more wrestling, more thrown fists, and plenty of nasty words neither of them meant. But when they got back to the house, there was something waiting for them which unified them immediately.

The power was out at the house. The flicking of light switches alerted them to this.

"Blown fuse?" Sammy had whispered.

But each boy pulled his weapon, Dean's Colt M1911 A1 .45 and Sammy's long-bladed Bowie knife. Dean shook his head once. Sammy had held his breath.

As they entered the house, the hairs on the back of Dean's neck stood at attention. There was something evil here. He was just about to wave a retreat command to his little brother, when he heard a yelp behind him in the hall, and felt a strong hand clamp down on his wrist, shoving his weapon down. It discharged, but into the floor. He could hear Sammy's knife clatter to the floor as well.

"Little Sammy Winchester," the man holding Dean's arms murmured. Dean had just enough time to register what was about to happen, but no time to brace himself, before the man lifted his knee and slammed Dean's arm into it.

The sickening crack of bone filled the night, seemed to echo all around them. The scream that followed was not Dean's, as he was overwhelmed by nauseating pain and unable to do anything beyond drop the Colt and gasp. It was Sammy's.

Dean fell to the ground in a heap as the man released him with disinterest. It was as though his true focus was entirely on Sammy, that breaking Dean's arm was simply a means of moving him to the side to get a better look at the younger boy.

Dean was certain he had never been in so much pain, nor had he ever been so afraid as he was while watching this man look over his brother as if he were considering purchasing him. "Leave him alone, you bastard!" Dean spat, trying to force himself to stand. Then, as if it were an afterthought, the man aimed a gun at Dean's face, without bothering to look at him. His fear shattered into cold realization that he was about to die, that Sammy was about to be hurt, that Dean was about to let down his father. A giddy thought slithered through his terror. At least he would not have to see the anger and disappointment on John's face when he found out Dean had failed.

But the old revolver did not fire. Dean stared at it, identified it, immediately and without even trying, as a black Colt Paterson powder revolver from pre-Civil War times. If he were about to be killed, it would be by a beautiful gun.

Sammy was doing what Sammy did, shouting in defiance at the two figures in charge. "Who the hell are you, and what do you want?"

Dean could not turn away from the weapon before him, but a sidelong look told him Sammy was being held by an athletic woman with short blond hair and a wicked grin full of perfect white teeth. She had her arms threaded into his, nearly lifting him off his feet, and one hand gripped his mass of hair mercilessly, offering him to the man like a sacrifice. Dean growled low in his throat.

"Healthy boy, Sammy, you really are. And there's something special about you. Wouldn't you say, Meg? Wouldn't you say this boy is something special?"

Meg practically purred into Sammy's ear. "I think he's delicious. And your clients will think so too."

"John Winchester's son. I warned him, didn't I, Meg?"

"You did. You pinned a pretty clear note to his daddy, if I heard right."

"I did, I did."

Dean lost his breath. He wanted to vomit. He wanted his gun. "Azazel," he snarled.

Sammy's eyes flashed in fear.

"Oh, now, don't go throwing around that name. I'm Damon this week."

"You're a goddamn monster!"

Sammy sucked in his breath.

At last, Azazel turned to look at the older boy. "You must be Dean. You know, Dean, I killed Deanna. The grandma you're named for. Burnt her right up. Samuel too. But not this Samuel, hmm? Something special about this one."

"What do you think you can get for him?" Meg asked. "And what about the other one?"

Azazel considered. "Probably twenty grand." He grinned then. "Of course, that's assuming I don't want to keep him around for free samples."

Sammy's face was so pale it seemed to have absorbed the only light in the house.

"And this one?"

Azazel shrugged. "He isn't John's baby. Won't hurt him bad enough. Just shoot him. Stomach shot would be the hardest for Daddy to come home to."

Dean swallowed hard, felt his heart pounding, and waited for another round of excruciating agony to begin.

But as soon as Meg lifted her weapon, Sam whirled in her other arm, and threw himself into her stomach. With a crash, they fell to the ground, and Azazel frowned at them. Dean forced his arm to obey him in spite of the pain, and the adrenaline assisted as he took Azazel's wrist in both hands and slammed it into the wall. The ancient Colt dropped to the floor. Dean threw his fist into Azazel's face wildly, and dove for his own weapon. Tears were catching in his throat, and he knew he might not be able to hold the .45 steady for long. He aimed it at Azazel's head.

Years later, he still was not sure if he intended to pull the trigger. When he heard Sammy cry out, he had little choice.

Meg's gun was against the mess of brown hair, ready to fire into his brother's brain, and all Dean could think was, "Stop. Please, you don't know how smart he is!" He didn't know if he had said it aloud or not.

She glowered at him. "How about we do this real slow? We're going to head out and you're going to let us. If we get to the door, I'll drop your adorable little brother."

"Don't you hurt him!" Dean screamed.

Azazel was laughing, the bastard. "Decisions, decisions. Too bad Daddy's not here to decide for his smart kid's stupid bodyguard. I really would like to see what he'd choose. I think we both know what Daddy would choose, don't we, Dean? I mean-"

"Shut up!" he shrieked.

"Running out of time, Deano," Meg cooed. "What's it gonna be?"

But it was Azazel's voice he heard. "Your life and happiness for all those other people's lives? No contest. You know what Daddy would want you to do."

He was trembling, and Sammy was staring at him with an open mouth.

"Not Sammy," Dean sobbed. "He'd never trade Sammy for you."

Azazel seemed disappointed. "Oh, but what about you, Dean? Killing me comes before everything, doesn't it? Does it come before Daddy? Before you? What if Meg were to offer to leave your Sammy happy and healthy, and take you instead? Sounds like a no-brainer for Papa Winchester, doesn't it? A bullet in my head, and no more older son to slow him down. He can keep the smart one. My clients-Meg's clients after I'm dead-won't care that you're the stupid one, Dean."

"Dean!" Sammy shouted.

Dean felt his finger squeeze the trigger. But he did not fire. "Back out of the house slowly, and drop my brother, bitch."

Azazel cackled. "Papa Winchester raised a coward. Who would have believed it? Not Captain Campbell or Henry Winchester, huh?"

Meg sighed. "Play your head games later. I'm not going back to prison just so you can play with your food. Somebody had to have heard that gun go off."

The man smiled sadly. "Another time, Dean? And Sammy. I'll be watching you. Maybe you'll be a more worthy opponent than your brother one day. If I can't sell you, perhaps I'll be back one day to kill you. What should it be, Dean? A bullet in your brother's brain or a fire devouring him while his skin melts, like your mother's did?"

Dean fired, but not before Meg tossed Sam to the ground and pulled Azazel out the door. The bullet lodged into the wall where Azazel's head had been only an instant before.

Sammy disarmed him quickly. "You aren't going after him. You're broken," he snapped in explanation. "I'm calling Dad, and then we're getting you to the hospital."

Dean had crumbled to the floor, sobbing. In the midst of the pain and a creeping chill coming over him, it hit him that he had nearly killed a man. It was almost as painful as not having done so.

As the shock set in, he was unable to keep his mind focused on Sammy's end of the shouting match erupting over the phone. He closed his eyes and slid the rest of the way down the wall and onto the floor.

***

Castiel hated old motels. They seemed dirty, even when they were clean. He listened to Victor snapping at their supervisor over the phone, until he couldn’t anymore. Before either of them could involve him in the conversation, he made a vague gesture which could be interpreted a hundred different ways, and slipped out the door into the quiet night air. It was not even dawn yet in Topeka.

He turned to walk up the sidewalk toward the lobby, and found himself slamming his nose into the hard shoulder of an enormous man who also was not looking where he was going. He stumbled back several steps.

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” The giant reached out to steady him on his feet.

Castiel had never felt like a small man before. He was about an inch, perhaps an inch and a half shorter than Victor. This man would tower over Victor. And…Castiel blinked. And this giant was…inappropriately attractive.

He frowned. Inappropriately attractive? That wasn’t right. No, this giant was not inappropriately attractive. Castiel was inappropriately attracted. There was a huge difference. He was on duty. This giant had done nothing wrong.

The door next to his own room swung open, and another man’s voice called out. “Sammy! Come on! Dammit, get in here! How long’s it take to grab a duffle full of-"

The giant cleared his throat and nodded at their company.

“Oh.” His companion poked his head out of the door and stared hard at Castiel. “Well, quit flirting and get in here.” The door slammed.

Castiel’s eyebrows lifted, and he looked back to find the giant blushing feverishly.

“I’m not…I mean, I wasn’t…” The giant sighed. “I’m sorry. Name’s Sam. We’re really not…We aren’t going to be bad neighbors. Probably be out before the end of today anyway.”

He nodded. “Likely, so will we,” he responded, gesturing to the window where Victor was still shouting into the phone. When his partner saw Sam glancing at him, he yanked irritably at the curtain. He sighed. “It looks like each of us has a partner who is less than a morning person.”

“Dean’s definitely not a morning…” Sam frowned suddenly. “He’s not my…not my partner. Not like that.”

Blue eyes widened as he realized what he had said. “Oh! No, neither is Vic. Not my partner, I mean. I mean, he is. Business partner. Not…partner.”

They stared at one another awkwardly for a moment, before Sam cleared his throat again. “I, uh…guess I should…Dean’s…” He backed away from Castiel, slamming up against the door that Dean had emerged from a moment ago. He smiled weakly, and shifted the bags in his arms. His not-partner swung the door open again, and Sam fell into the room onto his backside.

“What the hell, Sammy?” his not-partner demanded.

Castiel watched in wide-eyed concern as the tangle of legs sticking out of the motel room righted themselves. He cringed as he heard a thud which sounded painful. At last, the door slammed once again.

He sighed to himself. It was probably time for him to get back to tracking IP addresses.


	4. Hunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard enough to out-think a genius psychopath like Azazel. It's harder when you suspect he might be counting on it.

Dean could hear the shouting. He could always hear the shouting.

"If you had called, I could have told you I can't keep him more than a day or two!"

"Wednesday, Bobby! That's all I'm asking. Me and Dean will-"

"And if it's too dangerous to take Sam, what the hell are you taking Dean for?"

"It's always dangerous, Robert! You know that as well as I do! And it ain't only that. I don't need Dean distracted. If Sam is there..."

A flush of color and a riot of controlled emotions crossed Dean's face, all in an instant. Then he hardened his heart, pushing it all aside so he could smile at his brother. "Hey. It's just till Wednesday, okay?" he soothed.

"I don't care," Sammy insisted bitterly.

"Yeah you do. But don't worry about it. Dad says we'll be back, we will. Okay?"

"Why can't I come too?"

A flash of what might have been fear struck Dean in the stomach. But he dialed up the smile. "Because you're gonna be in the way, dummy. Dad can't have you screwing stuff up. Uncle Bobby's got loads of books to look at and you can watch TV, and I'm even gonna leave my comics for you. Don't get 'em messed up."

This was hardly a consolation, but Sammy nodded miserably.

Dean took his shoulders and looked into his face. "We're gonna be back for Christmas, Sammy."

He could see the inner struggle in Sammy's eyes, could almost hear him tell himself not to cry in front of Dean. Every time that happened, he felt like a baby after. So he stuck his chin out and glared at Dean instead. "Better be. Uncle Bobby will shoot you both if you're not, and I won't even be sad he did."

Something about that defiance made Dean proud. He laughed. "Yeah, okay. You got your knife under the bed upstairs?"

"Yeah."

"And you gonna help Uncle Bobby round the house?"

"If he lets me. He doesn't like people touching his things."

Dean smiled at him fondly. "Everybody makes an exception for you. Just...don't take apart anything that plugs into the wall."

Sammy glared at him.

"I'm serious. We're on thin ice with Bobby as it is."

"No. Dad's on thin ice with Uncle Bobby. Us he doesn't mind."

"Well, he will mind if you dismantle something expensive. So just read." He softened his voice and sighed. "Wednesday, Sammy. He promised. Okay?"

Sammy's lips were beginning to tremble. "Yeah. He's never broken a promise before," he whispered hoarsely.

It was breaking Dean's heart, but there wasn't anything else he could do. If John needed him to help follow a lead, he had to go. He knew as well as Sammy did that the likelihood of him making it back by Christmas was slim. But maybe this would be the lead that actually got them to Azazel, and they could get the whole rest of their lives back after. That would be worth missing a Christmas, for sure.

"Be good, kiddo. Keep up with your training. Have Bobby let you shoot some bottles. And practice getting into every car he's got heaped around this place. Understanding how criminals do what they do-"

"Gets you closer to catching them doing it. Yeah. I know. I'm almost thirteen, Dean. I know what I'm supposed to do."

He messed up Sammy's hair and smiled at him. "Right. Okay."

"Be careful, Dean."

"I'm always careful."

"You're never careful."

Dean shrugged. "I'll be careful this time."

Sammy sighed and turned away from him. That was his cue that his brother was finished with him. He bit into his lip and walked back toward the shouting.

"I'm ready, Dad."

***

Sam's heart was pounding. "Dean!" He banged on the Impala's dash, as if the shout might not have been enough.

His brother jolted awake. "What?" he hissed. "What do you have?"

"I...I've got him. I've got Azazel."

The words hung in the air within the car, words they had dreamed about their whole lives, words they thought they would never get to hear.

Dean's nostrils flared, and the Impala roared to life beneath them. "Sam?" Dean said very slowly. _"Where?"_

Sam gave precise directions, knowing there could be no error or time wasted. This was the closest they had been to Azazel since the night he had broken Dean's right ulna, the closest a Winchester had been since the night John had gone into a dockside warehouse with madness guiding him, the night John had been tortured, shot in the head and burned to ashes. Careless mistakes would get them killed or earn them another fifteen years of false leads and sleepless nights.

The fact that Sam had tracked Azazel's movements to a specific location now, before the monster had ditched his car’s tags, was worrying him. "Dean, do you...do you think he knows we're coming?"

His brother's jaw was set in concentration. "Yeah. But I'm hoping he doesn't know when."

He felt fear curl around his throat. "You think he knows...You think he knows it's us specifically?"

Dean took a deep breath. "Yeah. I do. I think he watches us as much as we try to watch him. I think we’ve always been a game to him. Ever since Mom found his merchandise and arrested the Benders who were supposed to be guarding it.”

Sam could feel a tremor in his hands, and he glared at them. If there were anything he needed in solid condition right now, it was his brain and hands. He could not afford this fear.

"Don't think about it," his brother ordered quietly. "That's not what you do. You get me to him. You got all the eyes in the city?"

"Most. All the ones connected to a network feed."

Dean nodded.

"It's a black Chevy Blazer this time. I lost him at Fillmore and Huntoon. Left up here."

"What's that mean, you lost him?" Dean growled.

Sam's fingers flew over the keyboard. If his hotspot connection could just keep up with his brain...

"Sammy?"

"It means he turned off. But I have cameras everywhere over there, I'll-There. He's on Washburn. He's not...I can calculate how fast he's going by judging his distance..."

"Sam!"

"Right in just under a mile. Look, he's not going more than fifty. He can't know we're behind him."

"That's because we aren't behind him! Where the hell is he going? Figure out where he's going so I can get there first!"

Sam flinched. That wasn't what he did. He got the facts. Dean made the predictions. "I-I don't know!"

Dean's voice quieted then. "Breathe, little brother. Okay. That's right. Keep an eye on the cameras, but we're going to lose him again. So look at your map. Think of the direction he's going. What lane he seems to be in. What's nearby? Where could he be heading?"

Panic was filling him now, but he let Dean's voice calm him. "Okay. Tell me...tell me what to look for. What kind of place is he looking for? Right, right here!"

Dean took the turn too fast, which did nothing for Sam's nerves. "Okay. He's looking for a place like where he trapped Dad."

Sam winced.

"Sammy, stop. Don't think about Dad. Think about where we found him. What sort of place gives Azazel the environment he needs to do what he does? Not when he's just collecting or disposing of merchandise. Not an apartment. When he plays his games."

"Okay. Okay, he likes churches. Churches and schools. Libraries sometimes."

"And if he doesn't know we're on his tail already, what is he going to do?"

"If...if he's not fishing for victims, if he really is trying to just lure me in, I...I gotta think he wants to get everything set up. It's Friday night, right?"

"A school, Sammy."

"There's one right on-Turn here, turn right on Burlingame!"

"I thought it was Washburne!"

"Washburne becomes Burlingame! You-Dean, you said you want to get there before he does! Stop second guessing me; you're making me nervous!"

"Sorry," Dean mumbled.

“Okay-no!” Sam forced his mind back to a patch of the wall at the old house, the wall that he had spent so much time trying to get out of his head that it nearly did not come to him when beckoned. “Wait. Dean, wait. The Chevy Blazer, it was…He took a Blazer, back all those years ago, when he burned that old mill with those people in it. On the water. Remember? This is exactly the thing he likes, poetic, nostalgic, freaking neurotic just like he likes, everything the same. Near 32nd, Dean, to the left, we're heading south, and-yeah, there he is on that street cam-Dean, he's heading for 32nd. I know it."

"What's there, Sammy?"

"A dam."

Dean frowned severely. "A dam?"

"Lake Afton. It’s a hunch, Dean. What if…what if I’m wrong?”

“Then we’ll regroup and find him. I feel better about your hunches than most other people’s facts.”

Sam looked up with narrowed eyes. “That’s…isn’t that from Star Trek IV?”

“Whales, Sammy. Focus.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve lost him again. He was on Burlingame. We’ll have just enough time to stow the Impala so he can’t see it from the road. God, Dean. What if this is it?”

“Just keep your eyes on the cameras and the map. We ain’t there yet.”

Sam nodded and frowned into his two dueling laptops, one perched on either leg, and the tablet mounted on the dash. This was it. He knew it. Azazel was leading them to the water, just as he had lead Henry to the water all those years back. Two years after he first met the Winchesters and Campbells, two years after killing their mother and grandparents, he had lead Detective Winchester to his death. All those years later, he did the same to John, in a Blazer, near the water. And now…now it was the same demon, driving the same vehicle…and it was their turn.

***

Victor was separated from the other men, who were picking apart the elementary school, looking for signs that Azazel was active there. So far, they had found all the evidence that he wanted them to find, Castiel thought with frustration. And not them, no, the ghost he was luring in. Azazel had planted these things at the school to lure in his ghost, and the feds and local boys were just pawns in his game. Who was this ghost who could make a master, a monster, like Azazel focus everything on him?   Castiel frowned and went over his radio. “Captain, have you got eyes on my partner?” he sighed.

“Negative, Agent.”

He nodded. Of course not. “Continue, and keep radio traffic to a minimum. Assume there are ears.” Because there were always ears. Always, when it was Azazel. The monster had been doing this far too long to not know every trick there was, and the best way to know where the police were at any moment was to patch into their communications. It was just a given that Azazel knew they were there and had done this.

“Ten four, Agent.”

He knew the local boys thought they were crazy. But they were professionals, good ones, and they were giving the school a clean sweep. There had been just enough strangeness to suggest that Azazel may have been there. That was what lead Castiel to believe he wasn’t any longer. Azazel never left a place without cleaning it, or razing it. He wanted them to continue with the school, because he was somewhere else.

And Castiel knew his partner. Victor was the bloodhound out in the field. Castiel could track a cyber trail like no one he knew-aside from that ghost-but once they were in the field, it was like Victor could smell his prey. It was uncanny. Every one of Azazel’s associates they had locked up over the years, Castiel had tracked to a location, and Victor had scented them out to take them down. It was inevitable. Which meant that if Victor had wandered away from the group, he must have caught Azazel’s scent somewhere else, and Castiel had better catch up to him.

He dialed Victor’s phone, gripping his sidearm in his right hand. There was no response. He narrowed his eyes. Victor was known to stray without checking in, which made Castiel crazy, but he always answered his phone. Something was wrong.

“Captain, initiate radio silence, unless you have eyes on target or on Agent.”

“Ten four.”

Castiel tightened his vest, snapped his gun into its holster and looked out over the scene before him. He tried to think like Victor. Something was wrong; Victor was hurt or incapacitated, or simply in the presence of a target and unable to respond. It was infuriating. Victor had never been the most by the book agent, but there were reasons a field agent did not simply wander out alone on a hunch.

If his partner lived through this, Castiel might have to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The street names and locations in Topeka are based in reality. The story, of course, is not. I hope.


	5. Target

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, no amount of training can prepare you for a very twisted reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you hadn't noticed yet, things are getting extremely violent. Faint hearts, step away. Fans of gore, step up. :)

He could feel his whole body trembling in anger. He clamped his mouth shut. He could not trust his voice not to break, nor his words to come out clean of a disrespectful tone. He wished he could close his eyes too, and thereby prevent the glower he could not completely squelch. Instead, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, feet planted just past the breadth of his broad shoulders, and stared forward with no expression on his face, hoping his eyes were not flashing with as much intensity as he suspected they were. He breathed through his nose to still the tremors, and gradually felt his heart and stare cool.

John watched this with a penetrating gaze, and there was some emotion which danced its way between approval and amusement, written on his face. “That’s it. Calm yourself down. I know you want to hit me. Do you want to hit me, Dean?”

The anger flared again, and his eyes narrowed in fury. “No, sir,” he snarled.

His father moved closer to him, and lowered his voice. “That’s not true. Do you want to hit me, Dean?”

“No, sir.”

“Dean.” John was practically whispering, so close Dean could feel his breath on his face. “Do you want to hit me?”

“No, sir,” he said again, staring forward instead of letting his eyes meet his father’s. He could feel the fear and anger pumping through him, and he continued breathing deeply through his nose.

“Dean.”

He felt the first hitch of his breath in his throat, his chest seizing, his lips and chin beginning to quake. He glared forward now, willing himself to calm down.

“Dean,” John murmured. “Do you want to hit me?”

He swallowed against the emotion in his throat, prayed his voice would not break. “No, sir.” But the phrase lacked the solid tone he had imbued it with just moments before. His eyes flicked down once, his right hand tightening over his left wrist, and his left hand balling into a fist. Then he took another breath and steadied himself, raising his eyes to their former position.

“Dean?”

He blinked. His breathing was too shallow now. He tried to even it out.

“Do you want to hit me?”

“No, sir,” he answered immediately with renewed obstinacy.

“Dean.” John stepped around so that he was in front of his son instead of at his side, and Dean’s breath stopped entirely.

Then he felt the flat of his father’s hand slap hard into the left side of his face. It knocked him off his stance, and he stumbled backward two steps.

“Do you want to hit me, Dean?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean snapped, but he returned to attention, breathing through tears filling his eyes, his nose, his throat. He slid his eyes until they locked with John’s, and he stared without blinking now.

“Good. So let’s work from there.” John kicked Dean’s knees out from under him, sending him lurching, but not falling. “What’s your brother’s name, Dean?”

This time, it was a fist into his stomach, and he choked in his air. He struggled to pull himself out of the curled position to stand tall again. He clenched his teeth together, which he knew better than to do. But his father wouldn’t break his jaw and his teeth. That would require surgery. That wasn’t the point of all this.

“I said what’s your brother’s name, Dean?” There was another flat smack to his face, and it made his vision blur momentarily.

Dean glowered at him with a feral smile. “We call him Bite Me,” he hissed.

John nearly smiled back. “What’s the matter, Dean? Am I getting to you? If I weren’t getting to you, you wouldn’t be talking. Don’t you want to hit me, Dean?”

“Bite me.”

The large man swept his feet from under him and slammed him onto the ground in one graceful action. Then he rested his knee on his son’s chest. “What’s your brother’s name, Dean?”

He fought for his breath as fear curled up to take him by the throat. “I don’t have a brother,” he forced out.

“That’s not true.”

There came a hand to his stomach, and it simply pushed until Dean could not catch his breath at all. He reached his hands to the wrist and tried to twist the hand off of him.

“Just tell me his name, Dean. I’m not going to hurt him. I just want a name. Then you can go. Easy as that.”

“No.” It was all he could manage now.

The weight from the man’s knee pressed harder into him. Dean struggled to lift himself, driving his boots into the ground for leverage, but the man was just too strong.

John’s voice softened, and it sounded like his father again. “Dean, we’re done. Okay? Just tell me his name. It’s just like tapping out. You know there’s no shame in tapping out. Just say it so we can finish this and go home.”

“No, sir,” came his voiceless reply.

“Now you’re being defiant for no reason. I’m giving you an order, Dean. Tell me your brother’s name.”

He could no longer speak, and his vision was whiting out. But he shook his head as well as he could.

John’s free hand, the one not putting pressure on Dean’s gut, touched him gently in the face. “Dean, you’ve shown me that you’re strong. That’s all you had to do. Now show me you can follow orders so we can go home.”

Sammy. Dean closed his eyes now. Two syllables. That was all it would take, and they could go home. Two syllables. Sammy. All he had to do was say those two syllables.

“This is a test, Dean, that’s all it is. You’ve passed already. Come on. Finish it.”

He had lost feeling all over, green eyes rolling back into whiteness and his words were slurring, but he pushed out the two syllables. “Bite me.”

The weight on him eased off, and John’s strong arms were helping him sit up. He lost his battle with consciousness for seconds at a time, but he could hear John’s voice soothing him. “You did right, Dean. You know you did right. Nobody’s ever going to get anything out of you. You did right. We’re going home, and your brother, he’s always going to be safe because of you.”

Dean gave a nod, and let his father help him to the truck. “I still wanna hit you,” he choked out.

John’s laughter echoed in the field, and Dean smiled to himself weakly. His arm ached, from trying to pry off his father’s hand, but he figured his arm would probably always ache when he thought of protecting Sammy. It was all psychosomatic. The arm had been healed for nearly a year now. It had been a year since he had been forced to choose between killing Azazel and saving his brother. Even Sammy had suggested several times since then that he had made the wrong choice. But he knew better. He knew his job. Protect Sammy. It was all he could be trusted to do right, but he would do it no matter what the price. That demon had said he would be back for Sammy. Dean was going to be ready.

He and his father would be sure of that.

***

Sam had just an instant to enjoy having been right about the destination of the black Blazer, and then a too-familiar cold fear filled his whole body. He glanced at Dean, who kneeled as steady and calm as if they were awaiting pizza delivery, while Azazel-unmistakably him, as if he had not aged a day!-stepped out of his vehicle and glanced around like a cat. The way he flicked his eyes all around the property made Sam’s skin crawl. He could see Dean focusing on the demon. A stray prayer skittered through Sam’s mind.

 _Please_ , he thought, _please, let Dean just take the shot. Please let it end right now. God, I don’t want to hear that voice again, never again. Just give my brother a clear shot and-_

And there was someone with him. Azazel was smiling cheerfully as he yanked the large black man out of the Blazer. Sam saw Dean’s intake of breath and knew this was not going to plan. Sam searched his mind, thought back to every street camera he had peered through. There had been no passenger. He knew there hadn’t been. Dean’s green eyes flashed at him sidelong, and Sam’s pounding heart sank.

He had screwed up.

Somehow, he had missed this. Azazel had been alone, just moments ago! Who was this man?

Azazel was still sliding his gaze along the territory, and he continued to smile. Sam wanted to punch the smile into the pavement. He wanted Dean to take the shot, hostage be damned!

He flinched in shame when he realized what he had just thought. John would have said that was cowardice talking, and cowardice had no place on the job. He bit into his lip, and looked to Dean for orders.

Dean was silently dismantling his sniper rifle. He would not take the time to pack it away, but it was stupid to leave it right where it could be used against them. He knew Dean wanted to go in guns blazing as much as he did, but the older man was not about to leave them vulnerable to a secondary attack, in case Azazel went against his nature and decided to bring a friend in for the game. The only time they had ever known him to do so was when he had brought along Meg, and she had been in a prison for years now. Dean had made sure of that.

Once the rifle had been stowed in the bushes, Sam reached for his .45 and handed Dean his. He watched Dean’s hand signals indicating that they were to follow Azazel into the building adjacent the dam and split the entrance. He nodded, and they moved together in silence, like one person, until they were just outside the building’s entrance.

It was then that they heard the hostage scream.

The haunting sound cut through Sam like ice. He very nearly shivered. He knew what could be happening to that victim. He had read every document detailing what Azazel did with his toys. Not just the ones he stole and sold, nor the ones he killed and burned when he could not find a buyer within forty-eight hours. Those were purely business. These were his toys, the side hobby he truly loved. These were the victims who would have to be identified by dental records, if they could find the jaw.

Sam’s eyes hardened as the screams continued. Sounds of anguish soaked into the damp concrete walls, slid across the dark concrete floor. And then there was the voice, the one Sam still heard in his nightmares. It was the only voice other than their father’s which had ever brought fear to Dean’s eyes.

“Oh, boys? Come out, come out, wherever you are! My friend wants to say-"

Another scream pierced the air inside the building, and Sam flinched.

“Well. I thought he wanted to say hello. Guess I was wrong.” Azazel laughed. “I know you’re here, boys. May as well come play. This guy’s only going to last so long.”

Sam glanced at Dean for instruction. His brother looked out over the scene. It was a wide open space. Sam was not sure what it was used for, but other than the corner behind which they were hiding, there was really no other cover in the whole building, and he knew that was what Dean was looking for. Dean’s gaze flicked up, but there was nothing above them to use. Azazel had wanted this encounter to be face to face. There was no way around it. Dean sighed. The green eyes closed for just an instant, then he nodded and signaled to Sam to hold back.

The younger man frowned. Hold back? Hold back why? He did as he was told, but shook his head at his brother to indicate he did not agree.

Dean’s glare told him to stay in place. Then he raised his weapon and stepped out into the open space from behind the corner.

Sam held his breath without meaning to, and listened.

“Well, howdy, Dean! I was starting to think you were really too stupid to find me. Henry would have been pretty disappointed if you hadn’t shown up eventually. Good detective, that man. Before I burned him alive.”

Sam badly wanted to see what was happening. He crouched where he was, in full cover, while his brother was completely exposed. It was wrong.

“Let him go, Azazel,” his brother growled.

“Who, him? No, he’s a pain in my ass. Aren’t you, Agent? Want to tell my friend Dean what you did to my partner, the one I ran with longer than anyone in all these years?”

His head was spinning. Agent? Agent. Partner? He had to be talking about-

“Alistair was one of the best and the brightest, Deano. And this guy…Well, I don’t want to hog the spotlight. Go ahead, Agent. Tell my friend what you did to Alistair. Go on.”

A deep voice carried across the distance. It was slurred with pain and thick with blood. “Shot-shot ‘im. Ran at me, shot ‘im.”

“Ran at him. As if Alistair ran anywhere. Maybe he sauntered at you. That was more his style. And you shot him right in the chest, didn’t you, Agent? And for that, you’re going to get to see me shoot your partner in the chest. Or maybe the stomach. I haven’t decided. I do love a stomach shot.”

Sam’s eyes closed briefly.

“I said let him go! If you think I can’t put this bullet in your head while you’re standing over him, you don’t know much. And I’m betting he wouldn’t even mind a bit of splatter, would you, buddy? Back away from him, and you and I can chat this out like the old friends we are,” Dean sneered.

“Oh, I don’t think so. I know you’re not very bright, Deano, but I really would like to keep playing my games. If you’d just join in, Dean, you’d see-"

“Enough! You have one more second to step away, or I swear to God, I’ll blow your freaking brains out. You know you ain’t walking out of here.”

“No? Maybe it isn’t my plan to walk out, Dean. Maybe I like it here. I’ve decorated, you know. Didn’t you notice? Behind the pretty black curtain?”

“All I see is a psycho in front of me holding a body shield like a coward.”

Azazel’s voice was suddenly steely. “Look again, then!” he snapped, and there was the sound of fabric ripping. “Look again, or I will cut his throat so surgically, he will feel the trickle before the pain.”

Sam’s breath came shallowly. What was Azazel doing? What did he want Dean to see? The demon knew he wasn’t going to let him kill that agent. Dammit, why hadn’t Sam known there would be a hostage?

When a gagging sound came from his brother, Sam abandoned his last order. He stepped out from behind the corner, gun raised in both hands, and sought his target. What he saw caused all the color to drain from his face.

Azazel was leaning over the agent seated in the chair, the only object in the space. The agent was limp against his bonds, blood dripping from his mouth, his eyes opening and closing at random. But behind them…behind them was what was causing Dean to choke back vomit.

The wall. It was the wall. Sam stopped breathing altogether.

Three feet in every direction from its center, like a morbid parody of an already macabre display, was a collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, ink-stained napkins, receipts, maps. It was the wall from the old house, but this time, it was not chronicling arrests or autopsy data. This one was filled with photographs and details of Sam’s family. There was Henry, his eyes rolled back and burns evident all over his face. There was Mary, there was Samuel and Deanna. And there…there was John. Their father glowered at them, pure loathing in his eyes, enormous gashes across his face, and signs of torture all over him. There were multiple photos of each of them, shown from different angles, different stages of injury and death. Dead eyes, silent screams and details.

And there at the center were Sam and Dean, each smiling as if they had no clue.

“See?” Azazel whispered, his voice carrying in spite of the dripping sounds and the moans of the agent. “See? We’re completing it all tonight, aren’t we, boys? I love symmetry, don’t you?”

***

Castiel could hear the voices inside the vacant dam management building, which was essentially a concrete box. Azazel would like that. Probably empty but sufficiently creepy inside. This space was just a fifth of a mile from the elementary school he had set up as a red herring. And now, Castiel was creeping in through a south entrance he had located. He had radioed the locals, but it would take more time than Victor probably had for them to gather and report. Besides, running in with ten officers was probably not Victor’s best chance. So Castiel crept forward, until he could see the faces of those speaking. He felt a slap of shock take him when he realized that the men holding weapons at Azazel, and therefore Victor, were the same as those from the hotel earlier. His mind whirred, connecting patterns. This was his ghost. These men, they were the ghost in the code.

He swallowed and took a silent breath. These men were going to get someone killed, and he did not want it to be Victor. Everything was out of control now. He and Victor should have been in control of this situation, and they very clearly were not. Castiel could not trust his aim to be good enough to hit the target instead of his partner, so he would need to separate them somehow. Victor was obviously injured very badly.

Everything was wrong about this. Everything.

But that was Azazel, and that was his ghost, and that was his partner, and he had work to do.


	6. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything comes to a head.

Castiel's patience and discipline were eternal. He had been the first agent to make a high level arrest in the human trafficking ring in years, because he had been relentless. Low level arrests happened frequently enough, but those taken in never had actual information about any of those Victor called middle management. They all had code names. For example, the lower level thugs knew Meg Masters, arrested in Lawrence by Detective Dean Winchester, as The Mistress. Alistair, shot resisting arrest by Victor Henriksen in Omaha, was often called The Saint. A third, tracked digitally and handed gift wrapped to the FBI outside Baltimore by Officer Sam Winchester of Lawrence, was called Lucifer by his contacts. And of course, no one knew the true name of the killer known as Azazel. Some agents before Castiel had begun to believe it could not possibly be just one person.

But then Castiel had caught up with Don Harding, called Samhain by his accomplices. Samhain had been far more helpful. Masters and Lucifer had chosen long sentences with no hope of appeal or parole rather than chance turning on Azazel. Samhain provided enough information for Castiel and Victor to decimate the trafficking operation across half the country, and confirmed for them that Azazel was in fact one person, one oily, psychotic, legendarily intelligent person.

Samhain had been found, three days after the arrests began across several states, hanging upside down with every ounce of blood spilled out from his slit throat, inside a locked cell. His roasted tongue had been located later, tucked into his prison-issued shoes, which were neatly placed beside the wall.

Castiel was patient. He was disciplined. He was a very good agent, and there was little in the world which could still distract him.

The wall behind Victor and Azazel was covered in horrible, sickening images, and Castiel could see how these two vigilantes were reacting to it. These were images of people they knew, people Azazel had tortured and whose deaths he had documented. The first man was actually gagging. The face of the second man had drained of blood as surely as Samhain's had.

 _Samhain...Sam. The man had called himself Sam. Sam, Kansas, Lucifer, Winchester, Dean, The Mistress, Lawrence, Kansas, also Winchester...Henry Winchester...Mary Winchester...and John Winchester._ Castiel sucked in his breath.

Azazel had not simply been killing officers over the years. In some cases, he had been targeting a family. Castiel's mind ticked over each name he had ever read, every victim, like a map in his mind.

 _Kansas. Mary Winchester. Samuel Campbell._ These were the children of that family, and Azazel was targeting them.

He stared at the scene before him. This man had butchered an entire family over nearly three decades.

"He does it for fun," Samhain had laughed bitterly. "The sick son of a bitch does it all for fun."

He took a new breath and assessed quickly. He had not been noticed, but that would change in a blink. Azazel had two guns on him, held by what were obviously trained off-duty officers. Between them was Victor, acting as human shield to the bastard they had hunted for years. These men were not here to talk. They were here to finish Azazel. The ghost in the code had been clear. They weren't planning to hurt the agents, but he had warned them to stay out of his way. Now here was Victor, the only object between them and their target.

Castiel honestly couldn't figure out why they had not fired yet.

***

Sammy still had tears on his face. Dean took the bottle of whiskey from his grip and stood it on the table. His brother did not even move. In spite of his own grief, Dean smiled at him.

"Sammy? When you wake up, we'll talk differently, okay, but let me say some things first. Okay?"

The younger man remained bent over his own folded arms, snoring very softly.

Dean brushed his hair from his face and sat at the table across from him with a sigh. His voice was low and full of weariness.

"Sammy, I know I don't say it, but I love you. I can't tell you how much. You're all I got. You and me, it's all we've ever had. And now Dad's gone, and I don't...I don't want to..."

He let the tears roll down his face, and for the first time since he was four years old, he did not try to stop them. "I don't want to be Dad, you know? I mean, Sammy, I have always, always tried to be that man. It was my only thought about my own life, you know? Anything Dad can do, I can be that too. I ran that stupid line through my head so many times growing up that some days, I think it was my only clear thought."

He watched his brother breathe for a time, then he lifted the bottle to his own lips.

"He's gone, Sammy, and I hate the thing that killed him, hate it with everything I got in me, but I can't...You know the last thing that man said to me? The very last thing? Nothing comes before killing this demon, Dean. Not me, not anything. And it hit me, right then, that I think that man would have let Azazel take you if it meant he'd have a better chance at tracking him down. If he could have somehow used you to lead him to Azazel's location, he would have."

Sammy sighed in his sleep.

Dean shook his head. "I know I'm supposed to be something else right now. But all I am is angry. I'm so damn angry, Sammy, and it's all I feel about Dad being dead. When you wake up, I'll be sad, and I'll miss him, but while you're asleep, let's be honest for once. That man scared the shit out of me, and all I feel, the only thing I've felt in as long as I can remember, is angry. I'll change the mask for you, man, because you're actually devastated. But for a few minutes, till you wake up, I'm going to stop pretending and just be angry."

***

"Dean, take a look, my friend! Can you see how long it took for Papa Winchester to die? Did I-did I make that clear in the display? Oh, I hope I did. Art is kind of my thing, you know. Only one that ever really understood that was Alistair, and what did you do to him, Agent?" Azazel slapped fed's face. "This is not nap time, Agent. Remind me what you did to The Saint?"

The agent groaned. "Shot 'im," he forced out.

"That's right. Just like this."

Before Sam or Dean could move, Azazel lifted his hand past the fed's shoulder, off far to the left of where the brothers stood, and fired a single shot. Sam turned to see a second agent, one with dark hair and wide blue eyes take the bullet right to the chest and collapse under it.

He turned back to find Dean charging Azazel. Without a thought, Sam matched his stride, but he knew his job. He dove for the fed, slamming him and the chair he was tied to to the ground, but cushioning his head before it struck the concrete.

With the hostage down, Dean was free to tackle Azazel, roaring as he did so. Sam covered the fed with his body, while looking frantically at the still body of the second agent about twenty feet away.

He heard another gunshot, then a scream, and another shot, and when he looked back, he gasped in his breath and hurried to his brother.

Dean was bleeding, writhing, but he was able to speak. "No! Sammy, no!"

He and Dean had never had to talk much to understand one another. The words were barely breathed, before Sam had whirled to aim at the body of Azazel on the ground, and he fired another round, right to the section of ribs where a heart belonged.

Azazel's hand had been on his ancient Colt, and like the rest of him, it fell lifeless to the ground.

Sam double checked the kill, then turned to Dean. He dropped to his knees in front of him. "Dean? Dean?"

The older man coughed, and blood splattered out of his mouth. Sam retched twice before he could speak again.

"Dean, you're alive, man, you're alive, okay? It's not bad. It must hurt like hell, but it's not so bad. And you took him down, Dean. You did it. I finished him, but you took out Azazel." He sobbed and laughed at the same time. "Dean, you did it. You did what Dad couldn't!"

Dean shook his head slowly, and let his eyes slip closed.

"Shit. Dean, stay awake, okay? Just stay awake."

There was the sound of boots on concrete now. There were suddenly several Topeka police officers all around, talking on their radios and cellphones, shouting to one another. Sam said a quick prayer, and stood, leaving his weapon on the ground and raising his hands into the air.

"Federal agents!" he shouted. "Right there, two of them. One's been shot. Other's been injured bad! And please! Please, my brother! We're off-duty cops from Lawrence, and my brother's been shot too!"

The cops stared at him, then sprang into action.


	7. Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath, friendships are born.

The Topeka officers had done just what they should have. He knew that, had expected it the moment they had run in to the building. But he was grateful when their captain finally located his badge and let him up off his stomach, and cuffed him in the front instead of behind his back.

The forensics team arrived extremely quickly, and Sam smirked to himself bitterly. Middle of the night on a Friday or not, this was the serial killer Azazel. No one wanted to miss this.

The wall was photographed in its entirety, every last detail about the family Winchester who had dared get in the way of great Azazel, the family of lawmen who had become the playthings of a madman. Sam couldn't watch the others staring.

They had taken the feds and Dean away, and the captain took his statements personally. At last, when forensics gave their unofficial preliminary report of what had occurred, the captain unlocked Sam's cuffs.

"You and your brother just happened to be in the area, huh?" he said slowly.

"Yes, sir. Topeka makes a fine vacation spot for two off-duty officers who need to get away."

The captain snorted. But he nodded. "Strange how it seems like Azazel knew you were coming."

Sam glowered down at his chafed wrists. "Azazel knew everything about us. You can see that."

The captain glanced back at the wall and nodded slowly. "Yes I can. Monster, that one."

"Demon," Sam snarled. Then he took a breath. "How are the feds?"

He gestured to a female officer to join them. "They'll live. Agent Engel's vest did its job, thank God. And Agent Henriksen...He'll live."

He swallowed and closed his eyes. "And...and my brother?"

"We haven't heard anything about the detective. I'm sorry. He must still be in surgery."

Sam nodded, but found he could not speak.

"Jody, I'm releasing Officer Winchester for now, under the condition that he makes himself available for all future questions. But I'd like you to take him to the hospital to see about his brother. He's staying at a motel, let him go back and shower, before forensics gets there. And...and if he's got anything still here he needs to take care of..." He stared hard at Sam meaningfully. "He better do it now."

Sam tried to smile, but it became a grimace. Jody frowned, but nodded.

And so the sniper rifle disappeared into its bag, and Jody did not ask about its contents. They went back to the motel, where Sam cleaned it of any evidence he didn't want to have to answer for, wiped his laptops, tablet and both his and Dean's phones entirely, and finally did take a shower. Jody waited outside at the car until Sam reappeared. Then they headed for the hospital.

***

"You need help?"

Dean glared at his trigonometry homework. "No."

Sammy shrugged and returned to his calculus. Only a minute went by before the brat spoke again. "Dean, I passed trig with perfect scores. I can help."

"Shut up, Sammy."

The numbers and letters were all blurring in his head. He understood the concept of trigonometry, sort of, but the words they used for things didn't mean anything sensible, and numbers never meant anything at all. SIN was what Azazel was entirely about, his whole, wicked personality. COS was the commanding officer of a beat cop. Tangents were distractions from the job. Girls were tangents, for example. That set of twins had been cotangents.

Dean laughed to himself.

"What's funny?"

"Nothing, nerd."

"You're laughing over math. You can't call me a nerd."

Dean rolled over onto his back, abandoning his textbook. "Sure I can. You're four years younger and two maths higher than me. If that don't make you a nerd, I don't know what would."

"Why are you even taking trig? You don't need it to graduate."

 _To prove I can_. But he couldn't say that. "Because I'm stupid. Shut up."

"You're not stupid, Dean. You're a genius."

Dean gave another snort. "Whatever."

But Sammy was frowning at him. "Dean, stop. Look, I know you hate that people call me the smart one."

"That's stupid." _I'm stupid_. "You are the smart one. Why would I care that people notice?"

"Dean, I'm good at math and science and I can screw around with computers. That's all. You, you're the one who-"

Dean's calm snapped finally. "I'm the one who fails every math test I'm handed. I'm the one that Dad had to take time off work last year to meet with the guidance counselor about maybe not making it to my senior year on time, because I couldn't get past chemistry. I'm the one that can't string together a Latin phrase to save my life, even though I had what was supposed to be the easy teacher. I'm the one Dad has to repeat things for because I get lost, especially when he uses numbers and code. How many times have you saved my ass on a training day because you could figure out the coordinates I needed in your head, or you could decode a message as easy as looking at it?"

Sammy sighed. "Yeah. And you're also the one who saved my life, because you thought fast enough to assess our situation and get me out of it."

Dean flinched as if he had been struck. "And Dad beat my ass when he found out how close I came to getting you taken or killed. Sammy, just stop. Okay? Look, I'm proud of you, kiddo. You're a bona fide genius. You're a hard worker too, and a good kid. You're the best thing to come out of this family. Henry would have been so proud of you. Mom..." He took a deep breath and pushed forward. "Mom would have been so proud of you," he said in a quiet tone. "So...so stop worrying about me. I don't need you to worry about me. Just do your work. When you're older, you'll get it, okay?"

He could see the frown of annoyance building up on Sammy's face.

"Hey. I don't mean that to be a dick. Okay? I just mean by the time you're about to graduate, you know what you can and can't do, what you're not good at, and what you're good for. I'm a grunt, Sammy, and that's okay. That's...Somebody's gotta be that. I'll be happy as long as I can pass my academy tests and my detective exam, okay? So stop worrying about me. I'm proud of you, Sammy."

Then his brother surprised him by bursting into tears.

Dean's eyes widened. "What the hell? Sammy, what's wrong? What'd I say?"

The younger boy shook his head angrily. "We're more than just that, Dean!" he shouted from where he sat, with his knees pulled to his chest on the floor beside him. "We're more than just how useful we are, okay?"

Dean frowned and narrowed his eyes. What must it be like inside Sammy's head? "What do you mean?"

"I'm the math person, okay, and I'm telling you, you can't just add up a guy's skills and intelligence and find the value of the guy! I'm more than smart!"

"Yeah," Dean agreed, "you're real smart!"

"No! I mean there's more to me than being smart! And there's more to you than struggling in chemistry!"

Realization swept over him and Dean nodded. He moved to sit beside his brother and put his arm around him. "Yeah. Look, Sammy, you are. You're so much more than just smart."

"When they were going to shoot me, it's what you said. You said, no, please, you don't know how smart he is."

He took a breath. "I didn't...I don't remember that."

"You did. Like them shooting me was a waste of a good brain. Like breaking a perfectly good computer."

Dean's heart shattered in his chest without warning. He drew in his breath now, just to be sure he could. "God, Sammy, I'm so sorry. I am so sorry. You should have said something before now. If that's what I said...what I meant was please, you don't know how special he is. You don't know how much I need him. You don't know...Sammy, you don't know how much I need you." Emotion clogged his throat, and he swallowed it down. "Sammy..." He took another deep breath. "Sam. I'm sorry, it should be Sam. You're the other half of me, you know? The good half, the smart half, the brave one. You're the good man I want to be. And no matter what, there will never be anything that comes before protecting you. Not because you're smart, you little nerd, because you're my brother and my best friend. Okay? It's nice that you're smart. Or..." He forced himself to laugh. "Or, I imagine it's nice to be smart. Wouldn't know myself. But that's not even close to the best or most important part of you."

The younger boy leaned on his shoulder then, just where he belonged, and cried.

***

Castiel blinked several times. "Victor?" he cried out before he even remembered why.

"He's going to be fine, Agent Engel."

He sighed heavily. "Good. Okay, good. And...me too?"

There was a smile in the voice. "Doctor says you're going to be fine too. Couple of cracked ribs and some massive bruising. Don't-"

Castiel let out a wail of pain.

"Yeah, don't try sitting up."

"Obviously," he groaned breathlessly.

"Yeah."

"Who are you? Nurse? One of the guys from Topeka?"

Finally, the voice's face appeared in his line of sight. It was the giant. The indescribably, inappropriately, unfairly handsome giant. His ghost.

"Sam," he sighed with a frown.

"I was told you're Cas?"

"Castiel Engel. Yes. Cas."

For no reason, a blush passed over the man's face. "Okay. Yeah. I'm Sam Winchester. I'm a cop from Midland."

His frown deepened. "Midland? Not...not Lawrence?"

Sam watched him for a moment, then nodded. "I live up the river from Lawrence. My brother Dean works homicide there, and I handle cybercrime from the Midland department."

Castiel wanted to nod, but found it hurt to do so. "If you're alive, and Victor is alive...may I assume Azazel is not?"

The awkwardness in Sam's stance and expression melted away, and a hard, faraway look came to replace it. "Yeah. My brother and I sent him to hell."

The agent was silent.

Finally, Sam came back to the present, and even smiled at Castiel in a shy way. "Engel. You're the guy that locked up Don Harding. Samhain. You're the one that put away most of Azazel's thugs. You're a hero, man. You and your partner."

He tried taking a deeper breath, and winced sharply.

"Dude," Sam said, touching his arm gently, "have you ever had a cracked rib? Let alone three?"

"No," he moaned.

"Well, I have. You're gonna wish you hadn't had your vest on for about a month, and it'll be two months before you'll be glad you did."

"When...when is it?"

As soon as it was out of his mouth, he realized it was a strange thing to say. But Sam seemed to understand. "Sunday morning. They kept you under so you wouldn't try to move. So don't try to move. It's going to feel like you can't take a breath for a long time, but just keep yourself calm and breathe slow and shallow as you can."

Castiel lowered his gaze to his arm, where Sam's hand still rested.

"Oh." The giant snatched his hand away and cleared his throat. "So, um, I promised your partner I would hang out till you woke up. He had himself a nice transfusion and a few bags of saline, and he's back at the hotel. They flew in your supervisor and he's handling everything now, with the locals. But Victor and I talked a bit. He didn't want to leave you, but your boss made him go rest, and I said I'd hang out. My brother is still...Anyway, Victor is a good guy. He said to tell you he owes you surf and turf."

Laughing was the most grievous mistake Castiel may have ever made.

"Jesus, man! You're determined to make yourself pass out! Be still, dude."

Castiel sighed shallowly. "Right," he wheezed. "Surf and turf. I'm going to kill him. Once I get through being grateful he's alive, I'm going to kill him for walking into Azazel's hands."

"In his defense, it was Azazel. Everyone walked into his hands."

The agent hummed his annoyance. "Victor knew better. But I'm just glad he's alive." He closed his eyes. "It's very kind of you to be here. May I ask something else of you?"

"Of course."

"I'd like to hear exactly what happened. After I...What happened?"

Sam laughed awkwardly and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Honestly? We were at a bit of a stalemate till he turned to shoot you. I...I screwed up. I tracked him, but I wasn't...I didn't realize he'd have a hostage. Dean's a dead shot, but he wouldn't risk hitting a civilian."

Castiel snorted softly. "A civilian!"

Sam flushed red. "A...Look, anybody outside the family is a civilian to us. I know what that probably sounds like, and-and I don't mean it to be-to be disrespectful or-or whatever. That's just how it is. There's nobody on the planet that knows Azazel like we do. We gotta protect everyone who...who doesn't know him like we do."

A small smile crept onto his face. "And you call me a hero."

Sam frowned. "I'm not...that's not what I..."

"Go on. Dean couldn't take a shot because Azazel was using my partner."

Anger and frustration flashed in the man's eyes now. "He wanted to make Dean shoot through Victor. Azazel didn't live this long because he was ever concerned about his own survival. He lived all these years because he's smart and vicious."

It occurred to Castiel that Sam was still speaking of the villain in present tense, even though he had already confirmed that Azazel was dead. He wondered if Sam himself had noticed this. He wondered if Azazel would ever truly cease to exist for this man.

"He was taunting Dean, but there wasn't anything we could do till he turned toward you. I-I hate to say it, man. But you getting shot was kind of the only opening we got."

"Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters," Castiel sighed dryly.

The younger man smirked at the humor. "I was able to get to Victor and pull him down, shield him, and once he was out of the way, Dean could jump Azazel. Azazel shot him."

Castiel frowned severely. "Sam, I'm so sorry!"

The man nodded. "Yeah, well. Azazel loves symmetry. He snapped Dean's right ulna years ago, back when we were teenagers, just shattered it like he was swatting a fly. This time he shot him in the left shoulder. Hit just below the collarbone. An inch lower, would have been right through his heart. Dean got a shot off too, but it hit his leg, and he went down but was still aiming his gun at Dean when I got between them. Would have hit me in the back if Dean hadn't warned me. I took the shot, and...and that was it. Topeka boys came in and I lay on my chest with my arms behind my back, Officer Mills cuffed me, and I honestly don't remember a lot of what came next."

Castiel nodded. "And your brother?"

Sam took a deep breath. "He will make it. Dean's a tough son of a bitch. I'm not sure he even can be killed." But the soft voice was breaking, and Castiel found himself reaching gingerly for his hand. Sam gave him a surprised, grateful smile, and there were tears in his eyes. "I'm really, really glad we didn't have to find out. He's all the family I got, you know? Nothing..." He laughed bitterly, and a tear escaped his long lashes to flit down his cheek. "Nothing says family like all your family being dead. I really...I didn't want to be the last one, you know?"

"I can't imagine."

The man sniffed and stood back. "Yeah, well, that ain't exactly the official statement, you understand. But you're the one...Victor says you're the cybercrime guy in the team. You're the one..."

"I'm the one who caught you every time you broke into the database, but never actually caught you."

A sly smile slipped past Sam's defenses. "Nearly did once. You were a few tricks away from my hotspot a few times. And you made me turn and snap once."

"If that was you snapping, I'm glad I never reported your activity. You're a good man. You snapping was just warning us not to get between you and Azazel, which is exactly what we almost died doing."

"You never reported it?"

"No, Sam. Much like I imagine quite a few details will be left out of the captain's report here at the local level, and out of Victor's as well. The man was a cop killer, Sam. We aren't going to let you take a fall for catching the most prolific serial killer who ever operated on this continent. You're the one who led us to Topeka; I followed your activity here. We aren't going to let you take a fall for doing what you had to do to protect what family you have left."

Tears sparkled in hazel eyes then. "Thank you," he whispered. "It would have been worth it, you know? My brother and me...we'd go to prison the rest of our lives, both of us, to have finished this. But...I would have missed him."

Castiel found himself smiling. All that kept this man fighting a prison sentence for the countless felonies under his belt was the knowledge that he would have been separated from his brother, maybe for the rest of their lives. Castiel was not about to let Azazel separate these brothers from beyond the grave. "No, Sam. I promise you there will be nothing keeping you from your family anymore after this weekend. Not so long as I can prevent it."

"Thank you, Agent," he breathed through emotion. "Thank you."

"Castiel," he corrected softly. "Call me Castiel."

***


	8. Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some loose ends are tied up before leaving Topeka.

Dean was not the best of patients. In fact, Sam suspected he was the worst patient most of the staff here had ever had to deal with. When he was dosed with painkiller, he was a relentless flirt, and when he wasn't, he was a bear. Sam had lost count of how many nurses he had apologized to.

So it was with great relief that he discharged his brother and helped him back to the hotel. They had released the Impala just in time for Sam to not have to tell Dean it was being held by the locals. He hurried to unlock their room door, grateful that they had chosen a ground floor room, as always.

"Get off me," the man growled. "I can walk."

Sam had had enough by this point. "Dean, I will drive your ass back to the hospital and leave you there while I take your car back to Lawrence. Don't you think I won't!"

"You won't." But it was said quietly, and the older man let him carry most of his weight to settle him on the bed. He groaned loudly and stretched himself out. "Did you call my captain?"

"For the fourth time, Dean, yes. I did and so did the freaking director of the goddamn FBI. He knows. So does my lieutenant. We don't need to report in for a week, and then for as long as we need after that."

Dean snorted, closing his eyes. "I don't need a damn week. I need till morning."

Sam was shaking his head. "Really. You think you're going to work in the morning? You were shot, Dean!"

"I'm not going to be tackling anyone! I can make phone calls and do my paperwork! It isn't like he shot my right side! I can hold a damn pen!"

He decided to continue the debate in the morning. "Whatever. Look. Your favorite kid brother stole you something from the crime scene."

Dean's eyes shot open. "You what?"

Sam shrugged. "I figured I had about forty-two felonies racked up already. What's one more?"

The older man snickered. "That's my boy. What'd you get me?"

He tossed the object onto the bed beside Dean's right hand. He watched while biting into his lip.

The green eyes widened, then narrowed, as he turned the ancient Colt revolver over and over in his hand. "Jesus," he swore softly. Then he sighed. "Sammy, ballistics is going to want this."

"Ballistics can bite me. You earned this." He sat on the other bed and faced Dean. "You can have your trophy. That gun belongs to you."

For a moment, he thought his big brother was going to burst into tears. Then he heard the chuckling begin. "Sammy?"

"What?"

"We did it, Sammy. The feds can take it from here. We took out Masters, we took down Lucifer. Alistair and Samhain are dead. We killed Azazel. The last of the operation is going to unravel. The feds can tear the rest of it down now. We're done."

"I don't even know what to say now."

Dean stared at the gun in his hands. "I do. That was for our mom, you son of a bitch."

Sam lay back on the bed, and they each let tears wash their faces and pillows until sleep took them both.

Nearly three hours later, Sam was startled awake by a sharp knock on the door. He whirled on Dean, but found that the man's injuries and medication had allowed him to sleep through the noise. He grabbed the Colt and shoved it under the mattress before hurrying to the door. He had closed it behind him before he even took note of the visitor.

"Sam?"

He drew in his breath. "Castiel!" He licked his lips, and felt his face heating. "You-you're-Why are you...Did I..."

The beautiful blue eyes stared up at him. "I'm sorry, I...I don't really know what you're asking."

Sam put his hand out to brace himself on the door, but missed entirely and smacked the back of his head onto the frame instead. His blush went rampant, and he could feel even his ears burning. "I didn't mean to...What are you doing here?"

Castiel watched him through narrowed lids for a moment, then took a breath. "I know Victor called to let you know you and your brother are free to go as long as you don't leave the country until we've cleared everything at the local and federal level."

"Yes? I mean, yes. Of course." He cleared his throat. "So that's not what you're here to say?"

"You don't strike me as men who need to be told anything twice, Sam."

"Right. No, I mean, we're not."

Castiel frowned. "No, I came to thank you again for staying with me at the hospital. It was very kind of you. You and your brother...Well, Victor and I are about the only family we've got too. The closest thing, that is. So I also wanted to say I'm very sincerely glad your brother is expected to make a full recovery."

Sam's nerves calmed as he smiled. "Thank you," he said softly. Somehow, seeing Castiel up and about, dressed in his suit, even if his tie was disheveled, was intimidating in a way that he wasn't in the hospital bed. But his eyes were filled with genuine concern, and it made Sam warm to see it. "Really, I appreciate that."

Castiel gave him a nod. "Victor has flown back to D.C. But I cannot leave town for another few days. One of us had to stay, and he would have, but my injuries are fairly simple, if quite excruciating. His are...some of his are more psychological in nature."

"I'm not surprised," Sam murmured. "He's the only guy I know who ever survived being alone with Azazel for more than a few minutes. I can't even guess what happened."

"So I'm alone now. Without my partner. And...and your partner...He probably needs rest before you can head home, yes?"

Sam nodded. "He's asleep now. He wants to head back home tomorrow. I think we're going to need one more night."

"Then let me buy you dinner tonight. Please. To thank you for your earlier kindness. Unless..." He lowered his gaze. "Unless you think the detective will require your company."

Sam could not help the smile covering his face. "You want to buy me dinner?"

This time, it was Castiel who was turning pink. "Yes, if that's...I don't think it would be unprofessional to ask you to get dinner, not at this point. Unless you'd rather-"

"I'd love that." Sam tried to control his grin. "I'd really love that. My brother will sleep most of the day, and he is going to want to be alone. I can tell that already. So I'd love your company tonight." Who was he kidding? He would love this man's company any night.

Castiel did not smile, but his face softened with relief. "Good. Good. Maybe I should knock again around seven tonight? Is that...Would that work?"

"Yeah," Sam breathed. "Yeah, that'd be great."

The agent nodded curtly and turned to walk away. Sam let himself back into the room quietly, and let the door click closed behind him. He leaned against it and smiled to himself.

Dean did not move, nor open his eyes. But his voice floated toward him softly. "Sam? I like that Engel guy. He's one of the good ones."

The warmth spread through his whole body then. "Yeah," he whispered. "I think I like him too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ends The Wall. Hope you enjoyed the ride. If so, please recommend and comment!!
> 
> ~Posing


End file.
